Crenshaw Rips Democrats: ‘Every Single Democrat In The House of Representatives Does Want Open Borders’

On Sunday morning, speaking with Maria Bartiromo of Fox News, Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) blasted Democrats for fighting against more detention space for illegal immigrants, pointing out that Democrats would rather see the immigrants caught and released, thus effectively creating open borders, since the wait time for the immigrants to have a hearing on whether they should be deported can take up to seven or eight years.

Bartiromo prompted Crenshaw’s remarks by noting that although Crenshaw wanted more detention space for the immigrants, the Democrats have fought against it. She stated:

Congressman, you say we need more detention space. You’re not getting it. The Democrats basically put a limit on the number of beds that you can actually have available for people going into these detention centers. So they are putting a limit in terms of how many people — and the detentions centers are busting out. One of the Border Patrol people told me when I was there two weeks ago, that when they decide, okay, you’re gonna stay for X number of days and then you’ll have a hearing, that hearing is in eight years. Literally. The system is so overwhelmed that the hearing is not for year, seven, eight years. Of course they’re not going to come back.

Crenshaw then launched his attack:

Right. And you hit the nail on the head. They don’t want more detention space. You have to ask yourself, what is their actual goal? Here’s a real problem. I speak to constituents, Democrat and Republican. There are no constituents that I have met who want open borders. But every single Democrat in the House of Representatives does want open borders. And you can tell they want that because of the policies that they’re pushing. If you are not for more detention space, it’s because you want them caught and released. And, like you said, they might have a court date that’s eight years in the future. I mean, it’s an enormous amount of time, which effectively means open borders.

And again, this is not fair to legal immigrants who want to do it the right way. This is not fair to legal asylum claimees who want to do it the right way. They’re around the world, by the way. People around the world who want to claim asylum in the United states are now confronted with a system that’s completely overwhelmed. They have no chance of getting in. Why? Because our good intentions have gotten in our own way. And it’s bad for immigrants.

As NBC News reported in mid-February:

The White House has asked for $4.2 billion for ICE to increase its capacity to detain immigrants to 52,000, up from 40,000 currently funded by Congress. Democrats want to cap the detention space ICE can use to hold immigrants in the interior of the country — away from the border — at 16,500 … In the interior of the country, where Democrats would like to see a limit of 16,500 immigrants in detention, there are approximately 20,800 migrants being held, according to an ICE official.